Nonprofit Radio for October 13, 2017: Development Assessments

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My Guest:

Glenn Kaufhold: Development Assessments

What are they? When do you need one? What’s included? How do you use the info? Glenn Kaufhold of GKollaborative walks you through.

 

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host last week was a tough one for me. My my mom died last thursday, october fifth today’s show is dedicated to my mom, jacqueline, and you know, i’m not sure she totally understood what podcasting is and what the show is about. She certainly had a general idea that it was for the good of non-profits and what she would want is for me to keep going and, you know, do a great show in her in her memory. So that’s where we are, andi also related to that. I want to welcome two new listeners henry and soo in old japan. Neighbors of my mom welcome henry and sue. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into paris, ca vivica, try a phobia. If you scared me with the idea that you missed today’s show development assessments, what are they when you need one? What’s included? How do you use the info that you get going? Kaufhold of g collaborative walks us through it all on tony’s. Take two e-giving tuesday. We’re sponsored by pursuant. Full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled tony dot m a slash pursuant also by wagner, cpas guiding you beyond the numbers wittner cps dot com you’re not a business you’re non-profit appaloosa accounting software designed for non-profits non-profit wizard dot com and tell us credit and debit card processors you’re passive revenue stream tony dot, m a slash tony tell us it’s a pleasure to welcome to studio first time guest glenn kaufhold he has been a successful non-profit leader for thirty years, he created gkollaborative spelled with a k in two thousand ten to provide strategic advising to organizations, particularly those in transition or start up phase. He’s, also co founder and co author of the blogger at fund-raising wonks dot com his business is at gi collaborative, dot com and he’s at fund-raising wonk and i’m very pleased to welcome glenn kaufhold to the studio. Thanks so much durney great to be a pleasure. Thank you for coming on. She shout out your mom for eightieth birthday. I’m here in town to celebrate my mom’s eightieth birthday this weekend. You want what’s her name? Peg kaufhold peg. Happy birthday pay happy eighty. Well, we have a wonderful, wonderful night out with your with your family. Everybody gathered for the big celebration. Kool all right, development assessments. I feel like we should just start with what is it? Well, i’ll give you an analogy, it’s, like, imagine if you haven’t gone to the doctor for ten years and somebody in your family dies early and that kind of shakes you up. So you go to the doctor and they ask you a ton of questions, they do it lots of blood work, lots of scans, all sorts of tests to really give you a baseline of how you are. You know how your health is so fund-raising assessments are very much the same thing. It’s it’s looking at, you know how you’ve been fund-raising i usually go back about five years. What are you doing? How successful is it? What’s it costing all sorts of metrics we interviewed tons of people on we look at not just fund-raising but things in the organization that effect fund-raising were impacted by fund-raising it could be your board and how your boards engaged in it. Your other volunteers that could be staffing it could be technology could be policies and procedures, governance issues of the board we often get into a lot of different things, okay, if you’re ah, now i get a lot of request for help getting to the next level. How do we get to the next level? And a lot of times those organizations that are very event driven have a gala, maybe they have something else, but they’re like one or two main events and then just, you know, sort of not well organized around individual fund-raising that that sounds like a case for, you know, on assessment to the sea where you where you could go and and also teo calculate your r o i on those couple of events events could be enormously enormous time sucks, and not for for so much money sometimes, yeah, absolutely and that’s one of the one of the things that we look at and it’s it’s an area in an assessment that i am really hard on my client about because i am the anti event fundez i’m never happier, you know, when i’m killing a gala on dh, you know so many and, you know, when i go into these organizations and the development director hates the gala, the executive director hates the gala, but you’ve got boardmember is, you have volunteers that love these things and the assessment, you know, honestly looks at them and looks at the data time that goes into that goes on at most, we have to make sure the flowers match the bunting. I mean, it’s crazy, exactly, because into the exactly and, you know, many of my clients don’t even calculate the staff time that goes into a gala. Oh, that’s a that’s a big over some it’s, a big oversight and, you know, enormous time, hundreds of yeah, i’m excited when i work with an organization that’s accurate actually calculated it. And when you put all this together and you present data like this, two boards especially, you know, they’re like oh, okay, andi, you know what i’ve had i’ve worked with organizations that have, you know, killed off their gallows because they saw that it really wasn’t working, but part of the assessment is not just a recommendation to stop a gala or a golf tournament, i hope not, but here’s what you can do instead here’s, you know, hairs how you could raise more money, great. You know, kate, how about before you go ok? Case in point i love cases l of stories, but about how to transition out of i mean, we can’t just, you know, i mean, you share advice had a transition away because we can’t just tell a body no more gala. I mean, maybe we gotta scale it down a little bit or short, make a public case. I mean, advice on moving away, transitioning away from the gala. Oh, absolutely. We you know, we work with our clients on that. You know, so case in point, i didn’t assessment years ago for a community college system out in california, and they had to gallows one broke even. And they were basically entertaining faculty and staff. So you know nothing. And then the other one, you know, maybe made thirty or forty thousand dollars. And when we announced to the board that this needed to go away, this gala just needed to go away. We created a middle donorsearch program. We created a program to attract donors between in that case twelve hundred and ten thousand dollars a year, you know, with with emphasis on our monthly giving to help. It be successful? Um and you know, a design and launched that program for them now they’re last gallon netted forty thousand dollars before they factored in. Staff time. We launched this new program before factoring for factories. And i’m losing. Quite quite likely. We created this new program in five months. They brought in fifty nine donors. Some of them were knew some of them were gala sponsors, so it was part of the strategy to move those donors over. And we raised over one hundred thousand dollars from the fifty nine from the fifty nine people, and it cost me the design and printing of a brochure. Yeah, that was it. So they raised a lot of money. New donors sustainable. Don’t write let’s. Exactly. Let’s focus on the sustainability because the gala has to be recreated every single year. Absolutely feels. I mean, you’re not literally starting from zero. You do have sponsors that air maybe have been with you for a while, and but you’re iran reaser news, it’s a whole new working with vendors of honorees. And how e-giving or not the iran aries. Maybe around that there’s a lot of start up time, even. If it’s a well established, so let’s talk about that versus the sustainability of an individual giving program, which is what you’re talking about, the genesis of so i mean, you’re absolutely right events have to be recreated every year, even though you have an infrastructure, but you you create a program like, like a middle donorsearch program or you create a monthly sustaining donor-centric you know, this study that i was to tell you about, we’re out in california, and we did a lot of house parties, we’re parlor party, some people call them, so i had boardmember zay had volunteers who were opening their home and, you know, bringing in their networks of people, bringing in existing donors in a much more intimate way in a in a way where the staff could really make connections to those donors and build relationships with those donors and with the right stewardship, you have the ability to continue to renew those donors without having to go through the whole expensive, creating a gala just to get return guests and so much more satisfying to i said it’s, instead of working with the caterer and the band and the deejay on the videographer and et cetera, the florist you’re working with, you’re working directly with your donors to sustain them, to build those relationships so that they are going to be with you indefinitely and there’s, so much more satisfying than whether the bunting matches the flowers and and working with board members to host these house parties. I mean, you know how many people out there have had boardmember sze who said, oh, i can’t ask my friends for money, i’m afraid to ask, but, you know, it’s easier and more comfortable to do a house party, so they are board members, you’re volunteers feel good about what they’ve done, thie organizations building those relationships and getting the revenue for a lot less cost. All right, hold your thought. We’ve got to take a take a break. I’m mixing up now, the the sponsor and answers we have so many of them. So we’re going to go out just briefly on going talk about pursuant because they will help you find your existing donors. I mean, glenn is helping you get new existing new donors now, once they’re in your database, your existing donors, some of them are hiding their prime for upgrade once they’ve been with you for a while, how do you identify those ready for upgrade deep in those relationships? Their next free webinar is finding hidden gems looking in your file aptly named it’s on october seventeenth at one o’clock eastern, but that doesn’t matter because you couldn’t follow the archive. You could watch you archive so if you could make it on october seventeenth at one eastern, great, but if you can’t like the vast majority of us, sign up anyway and you’ll get an email about when the archive is ready. You register at the non-profit radio listener landing page, which is tony dot m a slash pursuant also pursuing has a new content paper for you. Twenty seventeen digital year end fund-raising field guide ok, that’s a bit of a mouthful. What? What are the channels in the advertising strategies give you the highest our ally. Gonna we’re talking about our ally for events. Check this out. The field guide to help you tweak your year end campaign based on donor expectations. Get insider tips on digital fund-raising there’s. A whole lot more in this content paper. You go to the non-profit radio. Listener landing page tony dot, m a slash pursuant with a capital p okay, glenn, thank you very much for your indulgence. We could do this a couple times a new format for for me, but i think hopefully is going to work if you’re if you’re willing ready and you’re not walking out now, okay? Okay. All right. So now, it’s my, uh my a challenge to remember exactly where we were. Ok? We’re talking about dark parlor meetings. Yeah, these intimate gatherings that will be so much more satisfying and you’re going to have much more time with more meaningful connections, more meaningful donors than a room full of people that you have to sift through to get through to the ones that are the half a dozen on your list that you need to talk to that night. Exactly. You know, and at parlor events or house parties, you have people who are coming because they know why they’re coming and they want to be there. You know, how many gallons? Alright, i’m going to the gala because my friend bought a table and i need to help phil. We don’t even know why you’re there, i’d rather is a development director. I’d rather have a house party once a month than have to do a gal always focus on the five or six couples, exactly one hundred percent of whom are viable. It’s interested? They know why they’re there. Yeah. Okay. All right. I hope we’ve made that point. I think they think they have the right gal. Is that i mean, it doesn’t only apply to golf. Golf outings. Could be another another time. Suck with small roo. I when you really analyse it. Okay, so that’s, an important part of development assessment. So all right, some of you give me some of what you’re going to get in a development assessment. Like some of the well, well, i guess we’ll yeah. Well, let’s do it this way. What do you get in one of these? So we ask you for lots of data. My people who are pulling the data for my clients all cursed me out. But we often end up his friends. Eso are asking for a lot of information. A lot of data. We do a lot of interviews, and then you get a report back that ah, has a lot. Of has that that data interpreted for you. So, you know, a section we might have a section of the report on annual giving, and we’ll be okay. Here’s, the data here’s what we found here are the trends, and i find that many executive directors, board members, they don’t see the data at this level, maybe the development director’s looking at it, but in a lot of small shops, they don’t even have time to to really do that, so so you’ll get that that data we’ll give you our analysis. All right? Here’s, what we see is going on, you know it for example, this was happened with one of my clients, their annual giving went down for two years, and i went back to her. Why the dip? Well, it turned out they had changed their name after a merger with another organization oneaccord donor base. They didn’t know when they do. They’re weird branding problem serious. So so we look at the analysis, and then we’ll give the recommendations. So you know you’re i have a client now. That’s got a direct mail program and they’re they’re sending the same letter to their donors. They’re lapsed. Owners and acquisition names so well saying, you know what? Look at look at this guy here are some here are some, you know, different ways to approach this, to increase your your success with that. So every, you know, the plan is not just here’s. The data here is ours. Now our analysis here’s some actionable things hear things that you can do going forward, and we try to break those down into short term and long term best bets. Ok, for the client, you mentioned interviews. Who who gets interviewed so we typically i mean, if these always start with the ceo, i actually won’t take on an assessment project if the ceo is not my client because i want the top leadership doing so it’s the ceo could be the c o o could be the chief marketing person of the chief financial officer, the development director, everybody on the development team, no matter what their position is and then usually the board chair, the chair of the development committee, if they have wants some other board members if they’re engaged in fund-raising so we try to we try to get perspectives from from all different sides. Any donors putting aside the boardmember, let’s, let’s, hope that one hundred percent boardmember zoho xero that’s often provoc part of your assessment, but let’s assume they are putting aside boardmember donors, andi, just straight major donors, or i’m bleeding into more like a campaign. Yeah, campaign assessments. Moore is like a campaign feasibility, bilich she’s, bilich thank you, idle. I’m trying to think back of the assessments that we’ve done. I don’t think we’ve interviewed any outside donors who were not boardmember because they’re they’re typically not involved in the day today fund-raising operation of a of an organization. All right, all right, um, when, when is a good time? Tio, do an assessment? Assessment’s happened. I mean, i mean, any time’s, a good time. If you’re going to take a look, if you gonna hyre gie collaborative, sometimes i tease idealware today’s taking calls it. They typically happen. Because something has happened in the organization so it can be a new ceo who’s coming in who wants to get a handle on what’s going on in fund-raising i didn’t assessment last year where a longtime ceo is getting ready to retire, and she wanted to make sure she was leaving the organization in a good place for the next person. Oh, that’s really cool. Yeah. That’s, i really re something, you know? Yeah, if you don’t more than one of those where the person is leaving and two i’ve done, teo, i think they’d be rare. That’s thinking eso it’s, you know, it’s a change in leadership or there’s a new vp of development of director of development and the ceo wants to really kind of give that person ah, foundation to start to build from it could be an organization that has gone through a murder. I did one of those last year to organizations that had recently emerged the ceo. That sounds like you had another case. You told me where the branding was. Not very good after the merger. That was not the same. That was not the same thing. This was this was a client that, you know, two organizations merged to development shops, and the ceo said, hey, come in, take a look at what both of these development operations were doing and tell me how i should organize this going forward on dh so that was a fun project to work on because we, you know, it’s, really too assessments in one on gave her a plan going forward of what needs to remain local, what, neat, what? Khun b, centralized and had he leveraged the resource is you have and make sure you’re, you know, really operating it peak efficiency. So a merger happens on organization’s getting ready for a campaign on dh because it very often in the campaign you want to start with an assessment of your current program or a situation i have now, as a client is going into a strategic planning process, and i’ve never seen a strategic plan that didn’t include increase our resource is so they’ve said, we want to do an assessment of our development program concurrent with a strategic plan, because we know there’s things that we want to do, we’re going to have to up our game with fund-raising now, if you are going into a campaign, you don’t see this as being subsumed in a campaign feasibility study. They’re really two different things develop development assessment often happens before a campaign feasibility studies, so you’re with that you’re assessing the organization’s ability, too, do a campaign and on ability, the ability to be able to sustain their annual fund-raising while they’re in a campaign. So so you really want to make sure your house is in order before you go into a campaign? Where, as a campaign feasibility study, you know, we’re working internally, of course, on case for support and give pyramids and all those tools, but that study is very external with, with potential donors, lots of interviews, focus groups, really getting a sense of the donors perception of the organization of the leadership, their reaction to the case for support, where they might fit in in the campaign, you know, where they could see themselves. You know what issues are important to them? You can see this organism is a good explanation. One is more internally focused internal and the other is outward looking at perceptions exactly of the organization. Okay, cool. Thank you. All right, so you gather, you gather a lot of data, you do a lot of interviews, then i guess you go home and assimilate all the info you got. And what what what’s the next step. So i hide in my office and i you know, as you say, i said, assimilate the date, i do the analysis, we write the report on dh, then, you know, along the way along that process, i generally have a lot of conversations with the development director, you know, i’ll do a chart on, you know, major gift e-giving over the last five years, and i might send that to the development director and say, hey, is this right? Did i get this right on? And i had the situation recently where it wasn’t right? And, you know, there were reasons why wasn’t right, you know, we they fix the data that they gave me and, you know, we went on s oh, there’s, a lot of back and forth, a lot of questions that happen. I’ll circle back with people i interviewed say, hey, you think you said this? But, you know, explain better. Then we create a draft report it is sent to. The ceo for his or her review on dh that’s important because we want to make sure that there’s nothing in the report that the ceo thinks will be inflammatory or, you know, sometimes i say i agree with you, but let’s present it a different way, or there may be issues around staffing. I won’t, for example, in a report, criticize staff that’s there, but if i see something, i’ll write a separate memo or have a phone conversation with the with the exec director s o we go through that process, there’s also a verbal interim report before they get the draft. So when we’re in the middle of the writing, you know, i’ll schedule a call with a client, eric, just thes air some of the key themes that that we’re seeing, and this is what’s likely to come up s o we send and then we said in the draft, get the feedback, finish the final report and then present to the organization it’s, usually to the board of directors. It might be to the senior leadership team, it could be to the development staff, we will do a a power point presentation that doesn’t go. Through every single page of the report, because some of these reports going to lengthy, but we’ll give it, will give a presentation with the highlights in person to the client right now. So anything first of one, mind listeners, we’re talking, teo, i’m talking to what we all are. I’m i’m channeling all of you, so i don’t know if that means i wre we, but i’ll use eye, but you’re all here glenn kaufhold, principal founder of g collaborative. We’re talking about development assessments, how he does them and what they are generally, um, you said anything negative, that you see staff wise. It goes in a separate sort of executive memo. Does the board is the board privy to that, or you leave that to the ceo to deal with? You wouldn’t expose let’s, say, you know you found a really weak. Vice vice president, you know, keep keys, leadership position. You think he or she is particularly weak? You would only share that with the ceo? Yeah, exactly. You’d be more diplomatic. What would you say? What would you say to the board as you’re in your in your presentation share i i wouldn’t say anything to the board unless the ceo wanted me to a zay said before this, i consider the ceo my client on dh here she knows best how to communicate with the board on, and i don’t want to say anything to aboard that is going to cause problems for the ceo the next morning. S o if there’s if there’s a situation and i had one a couple of years ago, somebody had been promoted into the vp position who just wasn’t right? You know, this this person was excellent at donorsearch relationships was heading stewardship previously, and we said to the ceo, you know what put this person back into stewardship because that’s where they’re happy that’s, where they’re good that’s, where their effect of this person isn’t right to be the v p but i say that i say that to the ceo. Because then i let him her, you know, decided the ceo was the one who decides on hiring and firing and deploying staff it’s not shouldn’t be the board’s responsibility, so i feel that then the ceo khun khun, deal with that whatever way it makes sense. What if we alluded to this earlier board? Fund-raising is lackluster it’s not where it should be it’s not one hundred percent how do you convey that to the board first, what they should be doing and then how they how they can improve themselves. So the report always includes a section on board giving. So we will look at, you know, the percentage of participation and giving the average gift, you know, were they giving to annual giving? Are they giving to a campaign or what are they giving too? We don’t present the data name by name, although we do it name by name, but we don’t present it that way, so it’ll it’ll give them that snapshot, but we have a dog is a dog in the hallway way can’t hide it remains. We’ll shout it out so don’t not in the studio on the other side of the door. It sounded small enough, but i still want to be outside of the door, so we, you know, we will in the report gives suggestions on ways boardmember sze can can get involved, and then i will often have conversations with the v p of development on here’s what i found and i’ll ask the question, how are you engaging the board? Bored, bored involvement and fund-raising is not a one one size fits all you know, i’ve seen people say, oh, okay, next board meeting, bring five names, you know, that doesn’t work if you if you have to work with board members, one on some people, some people may want to do a lot more than bring a list of five names, exactly somewhere, not comfortable doing that, but there might be comfortable hosting a party with those five couples exact. So, you know, you gotta get meat, everybody where they are fund-raising is more than e-giving i mean, they all should be given in some respect of you were outlining. But beyond that, beyond their own personal gif ts on dh that’s, not one size fits all either no, no. Beyond that, you have to meet them. Where they are, where there were, there were their comfort level is, yeah, and you know it, bored, engaged, but also comes another up and other parts of the assessment. So, you know, in in the context of annual giving, we were talking before about the house parties and middle donorsearch programs and things like that. Most of my clients don’t have those kinds of programs, or if they do, they’re really not activating them, so i will talk in the report. I’ll make recommendations. Your board members can can do this and some of the value behind doing middle donorsearch programs, and i talk about board involvement, ah ha, in dahna relations and stewardship, because we look at that in the report, i’ll make recommendations for how to involve board members in thanking donors and participating and ongoing donor engagement programs. Okay, okay. What what’s your sense of how successful non-profit dorian in having robust board fund-raising programs are having the kind of participation that they ought to have. You’ve done a lot of assessments. Do you still do you still feel like this is? Ah, weak area for a lot of organizations, it is a week. It is a weak area. But i question our expectations around that. So here’s here, this is this is what got me going on this. A couple of years ago i presented at aa f p conference in fort lauderdale and the closing session was a panel discussion. I don’t even remember what the topic was. But there was a lot of q and a, and somebody in the audience asked the question of how can we get our board members to raise more money? And one of the palate panelists up there’s a woman named terry temkin whose purse it’s become a friend and she, you know, she said that she said, you know, we just have to get over ourselves. Fund-raising is staff driven? If you get one or two or three board members who will help you? Great. But are you know i think our expectations on board involvement have to change. This is pretty radical, it’s very radical ninety nine percent of the guests and you’re the other present have had for seven years of said, you know, it needs to be it needs to be where nufer fund-raising initiatives begin, it needs to be one hundred percent support board members need to do their part whatever again, whatever they’re part of comfort is what their comfort level is in fund-raising you know, the expectations generally very, very high, and yet we’re all frustrated because people aren’t living up to their weight reduced expectations were still trying to get to keep trying to get boardmember is to step up to i think we need to think about our expectations of what is really likely and then going back to what i said a moment ago about personalizing board engagement don’t tell them bring five names don’t ask five people, okay, work with us to come up with a plan that’s comfortable for you and makes you feel good, okay, let’s remind me that we’re talking about this in case i forget about the response unanswered, but okay, this subject of thie expectations. Versus the reality i want, i want to come back to and we got a lot more with glen and development assessments coming up right now tell us credit card and payment processing. Does your organization need a passive residual revenue stream that pays you every month? All right, tell us is a new sponsor telling in a couple weeks and we have a long time with them. So we gotta work into this. But here’s, what we’re talking about credit and debit card processing. That’s what that’s? What that’s, what they do as a partner non-profit you okay? So they’re going to be asking you for referrals within your community will get to that and you, as one of their partners, get fifty percent of every dollar that tell of skits, so every dollar revenue non-profit every dollar of revenue fifty percent of that from your your referrals goes to you all right. And they have an incredible offer that is on ly for non-profit radio listeners, you refer a business in your network think businesses owned by board members think local companies that support you and your community could be an independent artist, family members, if you’re if you’re smaller organization, any body or organization entity that accepts credit cards? That’s it we’re talking about okay, tell us is going to evaluate their their current arrangement with their payment processor? If tello’s cannot save you, i could not save that person money. They’re going to give you two hundred fifty dollars. You the organization that referred them if tell us can’t save them money, you get two hundred fifty dollars. Alright, you’re only going to find this at tony dot m a slash tony. Tell us tony dahna em a slash tony tell us, it’s all described. They’re in a very sexist, extinct paragraph the offer for non-profit radio listeners think about the companies that you can refer and check that out their landing page. Tony dahna may slash tony tello’s. Um, i think that okay, i’m gonna go. We’re gonna go back to glenn that? Yes, tony’s take two. Of course, where’s because i’m on the wrong page. That’s the problem. Okay, my latest video is is giving tuesday and if you don’t have giving tuesday totally sewn up. That’s ok it’s not too late, although too late is approaching. Check out the video. You know, we just and we just devoted a show to this two weeks ago. So, you know, we have the advice of jessica schneider from ninety second street. Why? Amy sample ward, our social media contributor. They had ideas and assurances that you still can do something. You know, you start small, of course. First year, if that’s, what if it’s the first year, but we do recommend, you know, getting on giving tuesday at some level. And so you can check out that show from two weeks ago. And plus, my video has lots of links. It’s basically e-giving tuesday roundup. So you find the video where else you know where you don’t even need me to say it e-giving tuesday video it’s at twenty martignetti dot com and that is tony’s take too. And i feel like we should do live listener love, s cetera. The etcetera, of course, is very important. So live listeners are in tampa, florida. Woodbridge, new jersey, woodbridge very consistent woodbridge been over over several weeks, maybe even more even longer. Woodbridge, thank you so much for being with us. Live. Listen, love out to you, oakland, california. Wonderful newburgh, indiana wonderful live listener left to you um, let’s do some live love on facebook jackie, jackie, pvc maria simple john campy rick chamness live love to you on facebook! Thank you so much, facebook can you like, can you share? Can you send ah, what do you sense stars or something? No that’s on that’s on periscope somehow you khun, you can like this like the facebook live video and little things stream into the video i forget on on periscope their hearts i don’t know what they are you can’t even put a hard on i figure out what they like you or they look like like and low give him lots of love and share and share here sharing is critical so facebook live love and let’s go abroad for some live listen, love, we’ve got took over ozawa, japan commit you are got munich, germany gooden dog on we’ve got okay also, tokyo, japan konnichi wa for tokyo and someone in the dominican republic o dominican republic thinking about you so glad you’re with us. Thank you. Thank you. Live love to all the live listeners and, of course, the podcast pleasantries come very quickly, soon after love listener loved over twelve thousand of you listening on your devices in your time whenever it’s convenient for you pleasantries to the podcast listeners. Thank you for being with us and the affiliate affections to our am and fm station listeners throughout the country affections to you, however, or whenever your station fits you into their schedule, i’m so glad you’re with us. Let your studio no, let your station no affections to ur am and fm listeners. Okay, glenn, i know what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the expectations this is going to be a challenge for me, but the expectations versus now in this new format, i don’t get a break the expectations versus the reality of board e-giving so you’re feeling like a mike my hearing you correctly, you think we should reduce the expectations? Well, i want to clarify one thing. I don’t think we should reduce expectations about boardmember is giving themselves to the organization, you know, if you’re on a board hundred percent, you have to you have a one hundred percent and whether an organization sets, give or get number or some organizations say it’s, you know, one. Of your top three charity gift for you. You know that one hundred percent there is there are no excuses for that. All right? Where i’m saying we have to be more realistic is bored expectations for fund-raising and not not to necessarily to diminish our our expectations that they participate but toe look inward for so this is where the assessment can come in is, how are we engaging with our boardmember is one of their wee asking them to do? Are we doing it individually in this size? Yes, in ways and where they are we need and where their comfort level, it might just be something very small. Yeah. Ok, yeah. And, you know, you also have part as i see this with, you know, what’s on my clients, you have board’s thinking of couple organizations that are umbrella organizations in an industry, and they have executive directors of other non-profits populating their boards. Well, it’s unrealistic to expect that those other executive vectors air going to fundraise because they’ve got that responsibility for their own organization. So you have to look at board, you know, board composition. You have to look at how people were recruited. I had a client recently said by board members were not when they were included, they weren’t asked to give money. Hey, we need to change that. So so, you know, if you have that kind of situation, maybe you have to say, you know, i don’t know what we can expect them to do it at this point, but i think we have to be realistic about exploitation and again, one size definitely does i guess i’m playing devil’s advocate zoho like challenging a little bit, but so do you feel that every boardmember should do something again? This is beyond their own personal gift do something to support the fund-raising even if it’s just ask a friend or, you know, if it’s something very small, do you feel everybody should be doing something? Or do you feel that there is some board members that we just make your personal gift and ended there? Is that appropriate? No, i think i think that every boardmember can do something and should do something it could be you were just talking about giving tuesday, you know, there’s, no reason why every boardmember even if they’ve got competition, you know, when their own jobs, they can’t fund-raising that much for you, there’s no reason why they can’t promote your giving tuesday campaign on their own social media personal social media pages there’s no reason why boardmember sze can’t pick up the phone an hour before a board meeting and just call ten donors to thank them for their gifts because that’s important to thank you’s a great one, thank you. So there are there are lots of ways that board members can participate in the fund-raising process that isn’t sitting down and asking somebody for twenty five thousand dollars for sure on the phone calls to donors are really important. Sometimes you have used boardmember sze tio to come with me on solicitations, just having a boardmember there brings credibility, even if they don’t need to ask or they you know, they don’t, they’re not comfortable asking just a company in you just like going? Well, i think we’re saying the same thing that i mean it’s, basically, but it has to be personalized, has it has to be on dh that should really be done at the point where they join the board. Really? I mean, isn’t that what you’re going? To be, you know, we do have, aside from your personal gift, we expect that you’re our key volunteers, you’re our key stakeholders in this organization, we need you, and we expect you to do something to help our fund-raising let’s talk about what the different opportunities are and pair you with a mentor on the board, who’s an established boardmember you khun tag along him or her? You know, i think that’s the way i think there’s a lot of value and doing it at the intake stage. Yeah, yeah, and you know what? I also i’ve seen this happen to you. No board members come on boards because of their other because of other expertise they have, you know, subject matter, expertise or they bring financial acumen or whatever something law, what hr hr, you know so but again finding a comfortable way for them to be involved on dh not expecting them to bring five names, they’re not expecting them to raze x amount of money in given you, they may just not be able to do that, but they could make phone calls to think donors they can come to donorsearch events and, you know, say hello to people. I mean, there’s things that everyone could d’oh. You talk about being, i guess. There’s mid term and long term recommendations. Eyes, there’s something short term, like within the next month. That’s, that’s unrealistic on not so much. You know, i think i think there are things that you could do in donor relations and stewardship, that you could turn around that quickly. For example, you know, bringing names to a board meeting and getting asking what everyone to come a half hour early and make phone calls. So those are the kinds of things that you can do pretty quickly. Okay? Others take a little more time. All you know, and it also depends on the staff availability. You know, i work with a lot of clients that just, you know, they’re staffer maxed out, so it takes them ah, little time to to, you know, change course on dh it’s also up, sometimes up to the board and then aboard engagement. I remember an assessment we did a couple of years ago, and one of the recommendations was to create a middle donorsearch program. And i showed them data. And in all that one boardmember sat there in the meeting said, this is brilliant. We have to do this now, she’s like, okay, you know, who’s going to join me, who know how we’re going to get this done and get it done now. And so sometimes that that happens also feels good, very gratifying to have your assessment considered brilliant. Oh, i love it. Yeah. Boardmember william was going to do that. Okay, um all right? Yeah. I’m trying todo what listeners have a sense of what the action items are that come out of dahna an average assessment. So okay, so outside a middle donors help the transition off the event driven fund-raising that you’ve been that that cycle you’ve been stuck in, you know, for years or what? What else can we expect? Sort of action item wise. So a lot of action items again and donor relations and stewardship you can implement immediately action items buy-in annual giving. So that’s case i mentioned before, where a client was putting their their acquisition there live bugs inside buns in the same mailing, you know, they can change that immediately, or as soon as the next time the male egos out or if it’s right? I hold, i thought now listeners were going to say, well, how come how come tony, let him get away with live one side bun? We have jargon jail on non-profit radio and i think i’m sorry. I think lai brunton sideburns is a common so i’m the arbiter of what’s jargon jail in what’s not it’s last year, but not this year and some year meaning somewhere in the past, but not this year and further than further further in the past. On last year that’s what like bonsai bonem but i think if you were, if you were wondering why i think this is basic terms, i think i think i’m having a lot of people s so i’m not easing up on george in jail, so if you’re not going so lots of interruptions here, you have to do it so it’s hard for you, you have to hold your thoughts. Ah, so you know, things like that, it could be and i’ve i’ve done assessments where they’re not doing enough teo retain their donors, you know, they’re focusing on acquisition, but they’re not doing enough to retain the argast recommendations for the tension critical way. Have something. What is seventy percent? Donorsearch lost dahna nutrition every year. It’s crazy way all know it costs toward a choir a donor than it does to retake guest number one hundred said way. We’re drilling it in, but but none but nonetheless still important that’s still important it’s not cliche. It’s critical. Yeah, yes, it does cost a lot more. And don’t a retention save your donors. Don’t go out and get having to replace seventy percent of your donors every you know, business works like that. Not at all. So there could be recommendations on. Are all those people that came to your gala? Ah, what can you do to try to convert them from being a transactional donor to what i call an intentional donor. Okay, go ahead. To find that, please, jorgen. Just so a transactional donor is. I paid a ticket to go to the golf tournament or paying a ticket to go to your gala. It’s a transaction, an intentional gift would be ok. Somebody’s, come to the the the gala and then here’s something they like. They go to your website and say, you know what? I’m going to become a monthly donor that’s an intentional gift. Okay, this comes up a lot of my work. I’ve been doing a lot of work recently in the hospice non-profit hospice world. And so in those kinds of experiences around my moms who spent just her last day in the hospital, i’m honored to work in that space. My god. But and, you know, the end of life care. Yeah, so critical. So better to go out a lot of the money that that the gifts that come in tow non-profit hospices their memorial gifts. So your mom died and were incoming way people might make gifts. That’s a transactional kind of abila marie claire in saddle brook if you want to do anything on the memory of jacqueline martignetti villa marie claire saddlebrook. So that’s a transactional gift. So where? You know, this is where the art of fund-raising comes. And how does that hospice organization take those donors? How did they communicate with them? How do they help them understand that’s purely a transactional donor. Otherwise? Yeah. Initially. What? What? Their money’s for one. What hot non-profit hospice as its i’m finding it’s it’s a little understood part of our health. Care system are non-profit healthcare. Until until you’re in a crisis. Yes. Oh, yes. Oh, what can a new organization like that due to educate on the importance of for the patient, the importance and value for the family. And so they can make at something that becomes your you call an intentional donor-centric treyz actually donor-centric with me. We got a lot more on development assessments coming up with glen. Of course, wittner. Cps. They do go way beyond the numbers. Major gifts, best practices and common mistakes could be something that glen and his clients would be interested in. It’s, one of the archive webinars. That weapon regular creates, um it’s not done by a c p a, of course they bring in outside. Experts tell you about major e-giving. It covers five of each of these best practices and common mistakes. And then it was the single most important thing you can do to have a more successful major gift program. So they got this one key that there, there, there. Is that the hook? It gets you in the webinar, but it’s worth it. You need to beef up your major gift program. Maybe benchmark. Yours. I want to talk to glenn about benchmarking. Make a note of that benchmark against others in assessments. Could we talk about that? Sure. Okay. Um, yeah, benchmark. Your gift, your major give program against others. Good to get some outside perspective. I think so. You don’t have to register. This one is already archived. You can watch it right now. Wuebben wittner, you know, just going way beyond. Just see piela and you’ll find it at wagner cps dot com click resource is then webinars if you want to browse everything they offer, click resource is and you’ll see the full the full collection abila abila software let’s. Figure this out. Okay, you’re non-profit but you use accounting software made for a business now, i had never thought about this until apolo see became a sponsor of non-profit radio. But it makes some sense to me you need something is made for you. This is twenty seventeen software there’s so much niche software you’re non-profit you shouldn’t be using business accounting software like sage and quickbooks. Those things were not made for you. Abalos is its accounting software designed for non-profits from the ground up. Okay, easy, affordable non-profit. Accounting software there at non-profit wizard dot com. Now, have you wondered why it’s non-profit we said, dot com that i’m asking you to go to instead of apples. Dot com. Well, very simple accountability. Apple o’s is checking to see how many non-profit radio listeners go to check out their site, and they’re doing it through this vanity. You are l non-profit wizard dot com for simply, if we’re not getting the click throughs and the referrals, they’re not going to be a sponsor anymore. It’s that simple. So if you have questions about accounting software, if you’re not so thrilled with your accounting software, if you’re willing to look at alternatives and alternative that is made for non-profits, then i need you to go to non-profit wizard dot com, see the value there and go further if, if you think it makes some sense for you. Non-profit weather dot com for apple owes accounting software okay. Thank you. Going my pleasure. Let’s. See, let’s. Ah, i’m going to do. Ah, where were we? I know what i want to talk about benchmarking. But where were we before that? Do you remember? Okay, i don’t even market. Ok, see, listeners to go back and say, oh, tony, what moron? Moron? Oh, that no, no, i am not john kelly on. I’m not talking about the president, but tony. Like what a moron you can’t remember. But, you know, it’s. Not so easy. You try it sometime. Let’s, talk about benchmarking. Is that appropriate for is that appropriate for a development assessment? Teo, look outside the world on dh show where you stand in relation to it. Ah, i haven’t done it in the turn in the context of my assessment work because there are so many variables, you know that that come into play, you know, i’m trying to do a benchmark, and that takes a lot of time. Yeah, and so i try to keep the fee on the assessments, you know, reasonable enough, but, yeah, there is benchmark. And i’ve done some of it. I one of my very first clients was a performing arts center and they hired us to do an assessment which we did and, you know, have kept us on. I’m still working with them, you know, seven, eight years later on dh, they wanted to boost their membership at a tte, the thousand dollar level and up, and they asked me to do some benchmarking, which i did, which was really very useful to see where they were in comparison, going back to the hospice feel that i was talking about before we went to break, you know, i would love to do some benchmarking on non-profit non-profit hospice conversion rates of those memorial donorsearch transactional donors to intentional dentures and really see not just to help you see, i mean, you’re non-profit where you’re at with that, but to understand what organizations air doing toe bump that up, andi, you know, why are some people having ah hyre conversion rate, then than others, but in the assessment itself, it hasn’t come up. I don’t say it could look a right. Somebody might request it, but also your arm or internally focused more internally, and you have thirty years of experience or you know what? What the possibilities are. How a shop can run smoothly and how to get a rough running shop would be more smooth. That’s, that’s basically the value that people finding your assessments essentially. Okay, what do you like to see staff doing with this after it’s done? You got these midterm recommendation, long term recommendations a ll the data analysis, it’s all been presented. What? What ideally should staff be doing with this? Well, staff, your shaft will get onboarding yeah, well and lorts i mean, should really, really internalize it and think about their systems think about what they’re doing have assessment. I just finished the data collection was very arduous for this particular client really difficult on dh they said to me, you know, after we were done cursing you out, we actually learned a lot from this because we learned there there are better ways of tracking data. S o so i you know, i hope that staff will take the recommendations and they may not accept all of them and some of them they can’t implement because there just isn’t enough staff, and our assessments often will not only look at the staff they have but help you with recommendations. Of how you should be staffed s o sometimes they just can’t do these things, but they can start to make changes by eliminating gallows and golf tournaments. Tto help them move in that direction is but there are changes that they can make around stewardship around donorsearch actions. So if if your organization is for example, taking two weeks to acknowledge a gift their immediate things you can do to look at your system, you look at your processes and tighten them up so you could bring two weeks down to two days. S o i want i want staff to be internalizing these things on dh teo implementing what makes sense for their their organization, all right? And then how about the board, the more the same thing? If if there are fund-raising initiatives that we recommend, like a middle donor-centric activities to start moving your annual fund, donors, your middle middle donors up to major gifts, you know? So there are things that they can start to do in that area. They, as i said before, can have a role in ongoing donor relation and also support for this and support for this maybe this is an impetus for, um, greater fund-raising so that there could be more resources to bring on more staff to get to the next level. Exactly. There’s, there’s, budget allocation, shins, there’s. You know, i’ve seen these assessments change, development committee’s and what they’re focused. And so instead of the development committee, just sitting there listening to the development rector give a report, they’re engaging mohr and they’re participating in the process. So these air these air, very these assessments really help healthy for board members, and i love doing board presentation because eyes go wide open their hearing things they had no idea about on its getting them toe beginning them to think, yeah, all right, what? You shared a bunch of stories you have? Ah, yes, maybe a longer term story where buy-in organization did an assessment then you heard back from them, or maybe you kept working with them and they grew as a result of this arduous assessment process. Great question. And no, i’ll tell. I’ll tell listeners this this was not planned. I didn’t know he was going to ask this, but this just came up this week, so my my very first client was a community. College system in california did an assessment, and i worked with him for a couple of years to start. We had emerged to foundations and then ran it for a couple of years for them until they could hire somebody. And i just it’s been five years since i stopped working with him, and i called the chancellor just this week because i’m writing up our experience. There is a case study for another client. They asked me to do a little benchmarking i’m going back to that topic on i and i called her with some some questions and how it was going, you know, kind of her own perspective on things. And so this was this was a a situation where they were raising a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, they’ve increased that and now, seven years after we did the assessment, they’re starting a fifteen million dollar campaign and there are poised to close their first three one million dollar gifts. They’ve never had gifts at that size, they’re engaging alumni, they’re engaging their retirees. She really pointed all of the things that they’ve been able to do since that assessment on what’s great for me. Is she’s actually? She has invited me to come back. She wants to reassess their operation and excellent. See, you know, see where is that? Where it’s grown over the last the last seven years. Very gratifying. It is that’s really gonna listen to you? All right, we’re gonna leave it there, ok? Glenn kaufhold g collaborative is his company. You’ll find them a tgi collaborative with k dot com. And if you go to g collaborative dot com slash assessments claim has a lot more information about this. He did it for the show. It’s like a landing page for the show. And you can fill out a basic assessment. Yeah, so there’s a little bit. A little quick. There’s a little quiz that you can fill out and then you submit that and we will send you are g calera tive guide to development assessments. He’s also at fund-raising wonk. Glenn. Thank you again so much. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Pleasure next week. Oh, yeah, you’ll like it. Whatever. It turns out being, it’ll be good if you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com were supported. By pursuing online tools for small and midsize non-profits, data driven and technology enabled pursuing dot com wagner cpas, guiding you beyond the numbers. Wagner, cps, dot com apple is accounting software designed for non-profits. Apple owes accounting non-profit wizard dot com and tell us credit and debit card processors. You’re passive revenue stream. Tony dot, slash tony tello’s, our creative producers, claire meyerhoff. Sam lewis is the line producer, shows social media is by susan chavez, and this very cool music is by scott stein of brooklyn. You with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark insights orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a, m or p m so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing so you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff to sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dh and no two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony talked to him. Yeah, you know, i just i i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It zoho, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. What separates those who achieve from those who do not is in direct proportion to one’s ability to ask others for help. The smartest experts and leading thinkers air on tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent.

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